Posts by Minos

  • SAMPA // A near-future sci-fi city in Unreal 4

    Quote from PogoP

    I think it needs something to tie it all together now, in terms of atmospherics. It looks cool but kinda flat. Maybe some rain etc? Might be cool


    Definitely! My plan right now is to do an fx pass and add atmospheric "smoke" and shit like that. Might even experiment with light rain too if I get time Btw if anyone knows how to do a "wet material" with masks and stuff please let me know!


    FMPONE: Agreed with the colors! I did a test where the lamp posts lights were a desaturated blue and it works pretty fine. I still wanna keep different hues here and there, I don't want this to look too "art directed" cause that's not how cities look

  • SAMPA // A near-future sci-fi city in Unreal 4

    New udpate! I'm planning to finish the scene by the next Sunday so this will probably be the last update before the final one. If you got any feedback please let me know I took some time to learn the new dDo this weekend and redid most of my materials. The difference is night and day, I can't see myself working on PBR stuff without dDo anymore Also got some trees in there, they are not the best but they should do the job for now (still gonna tweak the colors a bit tho). Again, keep in mind that there's a lot of placeholder stuff in there. [Blocked Image: http://thiagoklafke.com/futuresampa/wip01/sampa_wip13.jpg][Blocked Image: http://thiagoklafke.com/futuresampa/wip01/sampa_wip14.jpg][Blocked Image: http://thiagoklafke.com/futuresampa/wip01/sampa_wip15.jpg][Blocked Image: http://thiagoklafke.com/futuresampa/wip01/sampa_wip16.jpg]

  • Humans need not apply

    Quote from Steppenwolf

    You are right about that. But as much as the internet helps us to get together it also helps idiots to build networks. It's a force for good and for evil. I don't see it moving just in one direction that helps improving the human condition in the bigger picture.

    Look at all the Europeans fighting for Islamic State. That wouldn't be possible without internet and propaganda spread via internet either. Or the way how twitter has deteriorated the quality of journalism. Even on more serious news outlets it's all just "some random guy said this or that on twitter. we don't know if its true but we will report on it anyway just in case".


    Part of human experience The irony is that evil usually leads to good things in the long run, directly or indirectly. Look at all the technological advancements made during WW2 and Cold War. A fucking war made us land on the moon, something that humanity wouldn't give a shit otherwise lol. Alexander (a tyrant) conquered most of the ancient world which ended up spreading Greek knowledge to larger areas. Genghis Khan (a genocide) unified most of asia, dominated a good chunk of the world and at some point forced European "barbarians" to come together to fight him. You can find countless examples like this throughout history.


    The original video, although alarmist and scary, is pretty good in terms of raising awareness for something that's inevitable. You can't go against progress. What we can do though is to try to understand progress to be ahead of the curve. The kind of job we have now (sitting at an office typing on a keyboard) will be completely obsolete much sooner than we like to think. Once VR, biocomputers or whatever the new technological paradigm is going to be becomes the norm, there will be no point in "typing on keyboards" anymore. The same way that typewriters were phased out in a matter of years and thousands were left unemployed because they were specialized in typewriting. I don't think our job will simply cease to exist one day, but it will definitely change into something else and right now nobody has a clue about what it's going to be.


    The thing is, you don't need to be on the cutting edge to survive progress, you just need to be faster and more reactive to change than the majority, which let's be frank, is not hard thing to do.

  • Humans need not apply

    Quote from Steppenwolf

    That's just a nice vision you have there. In reality internet is full of bigoted shit, conspiracy theories, esoteric crap and people figuring out things to be offended about. The plebs have no interest in scientific or humanistic stuff that's available on the internet. The intellectuals are fascinated by political dogma and sideshows.


    The internet is full of shit just as well as humanity is full of stupid people. But plebs don't improve the world. What I see is that the internet enables interested people (like us here on Mapcore) to reach their full potential and do nice things with their lives. Imagine where we would be without the internet? I would probably be back home being just an idiot doing worthless shit with my time. The internet enabled me to start a professional career as an artist and helped me acquire knowledge that would take me a lifetime otherwise. Sure, we are not saving lives here, but at least each one of us is helping our industry move forward. Tiny contributions combined have a large impact in the future.


    Just as an example for what I mean, you are one of the guys who most contributed to my improvement as an artist. I learned a shit ton from you both artistically and on how to be a professional, and I'm sure you learned a thing or two from me. This kind of relationship would be impossible without the internet. I only got the chance to have a career because internet people like you helped me on the way, the same that I also helped other people.


    We can now extrapolate that example to other communities and you can start to have an idea on the impact the internet is having. I imagine this same phenomenon going on in scientific circles too.


    Of course, most of the people we know just don't give a crap and that's fine, that's they way humanity has always been and probably the way it will always be. We have this tendency to look back in history looking for patterns to have an idea of how the future is going to be, but in this case we don't have any parallels since humanity has never had such easy access to knowledge and has never had access to "higher" technologies such as nanotechnology and AI. We are now in uncharted territory and it is pretty fucking exciting if you ask me.


    By the way, this change for the better won't come from our generation but if enough people keep doing the right thing and raising nice people the next generations might have a shot at doing things right.

  • Humans need not apply

    Quote from Steppenwolf

    Im losing confidence in our ability to arrive at this kind of a solution. It seems like income inequality is just growing, and government is more and more carrying water for the same businesses it's supposed to regulate. In other words, what were dealing with really resembles unfettered capitalism.


    Yea we are steering towards a dystopian future with all the oligarchs ruling our societies instead of the people. I think there will be some second wave communism or fascism eventualy overthrowing this system. And maybe when that is over mankind will look into a brighter future.


    I kinda see us going in the opposite direction even if we hit some bumps on the way. Internet gives humanity unprecedented access to information and education, which in the long run will generate more "great people", or simply just more people doing the right thing. At some point, when we get robots to do our shit and we are more economically independent, governments will become irrelevant, probably turning into service providers instead of the big cumbersome institutions that tell people what to do that we have today.


    Even if I don't agree with all his views and think that he's full of shit most of the time, this movie can give some ideas of what to expect in the future:

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    Fun fact: that guy is now a director of engineering at Google. They are definitely working towards making his ideas true if you observe their behavior in the past years.

  • What's going on with your life?

    Quote from SpronyvanJohnson

    Yesterday was fucking scary. The baby got her first two shots and she didn't respond well to them. Eventually she went out cold and we had to rush to the doctor. Luckily, she came out of it a couple of hours later and everything is fine now. But that nearly gave me a heart attack.


    Oh shit, that's scary.


    My cat's been sick for the past few days and I barely got any sleep those nights (since his breathing is really bad it sounds like he's gonna suffocate anytime). He's better now, but goddamn, I can't imagine how stressful it must be to have a baby.


    I guess once they start understanding a few words it gets better though right?

  • Robin Williams has passed

    Man, this sucks so much Really sad to see successful people go like that. Second comedian I like who suicided in a matter of weeks, crazy shit.


    Really glad that Jim Carrey turned his life around, I remember hearing that he was extremely depressed a few years ago too.

  • Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

    Quote from PaulH

    It's a bit of a shame as I (totally unbiased-ly, of course) think we did a decent job with the Crysis 3 multiplayer, we just had neither the team size, budget, technical foundation or player base to convert what we made into much of a success, past the initial favorable review stage anyway. Now to see a much larger franchise like this take so much 'inspiration' from what we did (along with other games) is a little disheartening (they've even taken the orbital strike kill streak from C3 according to that video).


    Then again though, as Puddy said, there's not a lot out there that's totally original anymore, and everyone borrows from somewhere. Also I do actually love playing COD multiplayer and I like the fact that they are trying to freshen things up, regardless of where they got their ideas from. So basically, I'm conflicted. In time though I will get over it and I'm sure this will be another COD that I end up playing for the majority of the next year until the next iteration.


    /! cry baby of the week /!


    Didn't Crysis play a lot like CoD too? If anything I'd take it as a compliment that the main shooter franchise in the world is borrowing ideas from a game you worked on. Just because someone is the first to realize an idea doesn't mean that they own the idea...

  • SAMPA // A near-future sci-fi city in Unreal 4

    Quote from Mazy

    Absolutely gorgeous Minos~~~fpfp


    I guess this goes a bit under the store front stuff as well, but getting some more building signs ala the Mapcore one in as well could make it pop even more. Oh and plants/tree? I guess that lone bush that's just sitting there is a test of some sort?


    haha yeah that bush was just a test. I really want to get some foliage in there but the stock foliage models look pretty bad... might just buy a pack online and tweak the textures


    Quote from Jord

    Loving this so much. Reminds me a bit of Remember Me's style and that had some stunning art.


    When you're finished or whenever you get the time I'd love to see a break down of your modular parts if you don't mind? It's something I'm trying to improve on and I was attempting to make a city scene a while ago but as you found I struggled with the creeping scope of the sheer scale of a city


    Sure I can post some breakdowns later. The way I'm making this is very organic though, I'm using modular pieces where they make sense (like for balconies and stuff) but I'd say that more than a third of the buildings are made of one big piece each.

  • SAMPA // A near-future sci-fi city in Unreal 4

    Update time

    The main street is pretty much done architecture wise (still need lots of props) and it will be more of a commercial area. I also blocked out two other small areas (which I'll work on next): a small backalley filled with small shops and a corporate plaza (which part of can be seen at the end of this picture).


    Thanks a lot for the feedback so far guys, some great ideas coming from this thread

    [Blocked Image: http://thiagoklafke.com/futuresampa/wip01/sampa_wip09.jpg]


    aaand fixed my parallax shader to support emissive on the background layer only, looks much better now

    [Blocked Image: http://thiagoklafke.com/futuresampa/wip01/parallaxmaterial_new.jpg]